Friday, January 30, 2009

Web 18; online venture of Network 18 has registered loss for Q3; 2008 - 09. Company posted net loss of 9.57 Cr during last year. It will be interesting to see how online business sustains during recession as giants like Web 18 doesn't seem breaking even in near future.

Must see company's press release here as it's showing various important statistics for media industry.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Reliance's media and entertainment arm BIG was to launch 20 TV channels during end of the year covering genres such as music, movies, kids, entertainment and news. However, company reports that it is no longer ready to enter the market and will postpone the launching. This rescheduling is in lieu of current market conditions and company's strategic decisions.

Also, BIG entertainment is in process to start new vertical dedicated to movie marketing, media planning and buying and creative. This vertical will cater to internal needs of BIG entertainment.

One aspect of having own TV channels is that in near future; IPTV is going to become buzz word in industry and customized channels will play major role in acquiring market share for all players. With Reliance IPTV services ready to launch during later this year, having personal TV channels will make big difference and give an extra edge to reliance.

Finally, we can say that Reliance is coming in E&M industry in BIG way. Company's plans seems to be gigantic. However, success of such business largely depends on marketing and content. It will be interesting to see when company tests the water. Till then keep your fingers crossed!

UTV's new media ventures have registered profits for Q309. Titled as UTV New Media business, UTV has Softwares, interactive products under this umbrella. Company also has Gaming as another segment. Compare to loss during last year, this year has proved to be successful for UTV. UTV gaming showed EBITDA of 12.23 million while New media segment showed EBITDA of 1.405 million during the quarter. However, consolidated figures for last 9 months for these verticals shows loss. New media business accounted for 4% of company's profits. Source: Medianama

It is interesting to see companies registering earning revenues and sustaining businesses during tough times by appropriate media strategies and using new media as driving vehicles for new age business. I believe that proper mix of conventional media and new media products will help corporate to sustain during recession and get an edge over competition.

NDTV is going through crucial time and effects of recession has started showing up. Company is cutting down its expenses and re looking at few ventures. NDTV registered net loss of 174.8 Million during third quarter. While company's revenue showed 10.7 % growth, expenses were on higher side which resulted in overall loss; reports Medianama.

Here is the snapshot of what these figures looks like:

It is rumored that company will either downsize its delhi based channel MetroNaton or shut it down. NDTV was in talk with HT and BCCL for strategic partnership about this however, both of them have denied this offer.

It would be interesting to see how NDTV takes this matter forward. Mounting pressures, declining revenues and increasing competition in Indian News business would surely result in something good. If media houses manage to provide valuable news content and can sell it across various media vehicles, it would be great for E&M industry.

CyberMedia India Online Pvt Ltd (CIOL) has undertaken major restructuring processes. Company will merge its online portal with its Parent company CyberMedia India Ltd. CIOL claims to receive a monthly average of 10.5 million page views and 1.1 million unique visitors.

Company has 15 Major publications and 12 websites catering to various verticals of digital, internet, mobile and IT industry. It is also expected that company will go through several cost cutting initiatives as Medianama reports.

Here is snapshot of company's changing revenue mix for last year.

Well, CyberMedia's publications are thoroughly written and provides valuable insights for marketers, managers and entrepreneurs. However, company's online initiatives doesn't seem so much appleaing. I personally believe that CyberMedia can do much more at this front to attract viewers. Let's hope restructuring results in better revenue generation for the company.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Motorola is not performing well. Revenues down by 26% YoY. Company's cellphone sales is declining. 54% down QoQ. Company is under pressure and taking new actions to focus on new developments and future opportunities. What can you predict the 'new action' would be??

Yes, you are right. Layoff! Motorola is set to fire 4000 people during this year. Read this to know what company's CEO Mr. Jha has to say.

Company is saying it will focus on developing smart phones. Predictions are also that company will focus on developing android based phones and may discontinue its Microsoft based smart phones. However, there is no clear news about this...

What would be company's next move? Well, we don't know. But it is for sure that doing business and generating revenue is becoming tough for corporates and employees are under pressure to perform be it any company. I believe that new wave of android based open system and convergence of voice, data and video services will change the scenario in coming years. But till then keep your fingers crossed!

This is really painful news. Google, company which always seems to be progressing has started firing people. Yes, Google is stopping connections with 100 of its people hiring services . On Google's official blog, this information was confirmed and now, company is set to cut all its connections with third party manpower suppliers.

Yesterday, I had a discussion with this person who was saying about growth of Internet sector despite recession. We agreed that Internet media would grow despite of recession because of unlimited opportunities it offers. However, I am not sure about how things will take shape and what would be driver for growth.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Prestigious New York Times published a story which referred to a research done by a young scientist called Alex Wissner-Gross who allegedly claimed “that performing two Google searches uses up as much energy as boiling the kettle for a cup of tea”. This comes around 7 to 10 grams. This created lot of buzz in internet industry and reporters started discussing about this...

Now the turn comes in the story...

According to Wissner-Gross, he never said / claimed such statement and he never measured any stats on this. He also said that this figure is coming from some third party research and he is not sure about source of this information. We don't know who created this buff; however Wissner-Gross became popular in a days time and reporters were busy interviewing him the whole day!! He also did not miss the opportunity to market his firm called CO2Stats.

The dimention from which I would see this thing is PR!Isn't this PR? I have no doubt that both NYT and CO2stats will leverage on this opportunity. I am not sure whether this misrepresentation of data is by mistake or its is being done consciously. However, it is for sure that any news item revolving around Google will be discussed and will get you some mileage. Guys, use Google to make your marketing! Good example of PR on web.

Can you name Google’s top ten products? If you look at how Quantcast ranks Google’s subdomains, you can get a sense of which Google products are the most popular, since they each have their own subdomain. Google’s main search engine tops the list with an estimated 136.6 million unique visitors in the U.S. Then comes Google Maps (36 million), Image Search (31.7 million), and Gmail (10.5 million). Google Docs, Sites, and Knol are still too small to make the top-ten, but are all showing decent growth.

YouTube, Blogger, and Orkut are not included below because they are on their own domains, but YouTube would be second with 70 million unique U.S. visitors, and Blogger would be in the top 5 with 23.5 million. Orkut is not popular in the U.S., so it would not be a factor in this particular list. And I took out sorry.google.com, the domain Google uses to try to catch bots and spyware. It would have ranked No. 8.

Another notable trend that Quantcast measures is the rise of Google Book Search, which it claims surpassed Google News in visitors back in September. Perhaps the enhanced newspaper archive search features it introduced back then helped. Book Search visitors are now at 8.4 million vs. 7.4 million for Google News, according to Quantcast. Other measurement services such as comScore and Compete show Google News to still be bigger than Google Book Search. ComScore for instance shows Google News at 15.6 million unique U.S. visitors in November, compared to 7.8 million for Book Search. But both also show significant growth in Book Search visitors since the summer.

The Quantcast numbers are not completely reliable because Google’s sites have not been “Quantified” (the process Quantcast uses to collect its most accurate data). But they are roughly accurate. Below the Quantcast rankings, I’ve put the comparable rankings from comScore for U.S. visitors. Some of the rankings are different, but nine out of same products make it on each list. (The only difference is that comScore counts Google Product Search, while Quantcast counts Google Groups).

2008, a year of many turnarounds!! Recession hitting the markets and companies shutting down were most shocking waves of past year. However, Apple has experienced tremendous growth during last year. Success of iPhone was most crucial factor for Apple. Also, company saw incredible growth in iMac market. Full article...

Story of iPhone is great example of how collaborative creativity leads to success. iPhone apps are major force to drive success for iPhone. Many private developers have developed more than 1000 applications for iPhone. This, I believe one of major factor for success of iPhone.

Also, continuous innovation in iMac was influential for Mac book. Yes, there are many lessons to learn for entrepreneur from Apple's success story. This year it was collaborative creativity, continuous innovation and effective marketing were key for success. If this success is to be graded, I would reserve 'A' for Apple.